Royal Asiatic Society Shanghai – Whitey Smith in Shanghai’s Jazz Age: The Man Who Taught China to Dance – 18/5/17
Posted: May 16th, 2017 | No Comments »To note the re-publication of Whitey Smith’s fantastic I Didn’t Make a Million by Earnshaw Books…
7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Whitey Smith in Shanghai’s Jazz Age: The Man Who Taught China to Dance
Speaker: Andrew Field and Graham Earnshaw
JOINT EVENT The Hopkins China Forum and RAS
18:45 – Doors Open
19:00 – Lecture
19:45 – Q&A
20:15 – Mixer/Drinks/Dinner
21:00 – Live music at the Wooden Box
Whitey Smith was one of the earliest American jazz musicians to play in Shanghai, and one of the most loved jazz musicians in China between the 1920s and 1930s, as both his own book and many other records from the era attest. In tonight’s talk, we re-launch his memoirs with the publisher and one of the world’s experts on Shanghai in the jazz age and author of the introduction.
Andrew Field is Associate Dean at Duke Kunshan University and scholar of Chinese literature and culture. In addition to Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist (2014), he wrote Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954 (2010) and is the co-author of Shanghai Nightscapes: A Nocturnal Biography of a Global City (2015). Field has taught East Asian History at the University of Puget Sound, and was Lecturer in Chinese History at the University of South Wales. In addition to these recent books, he was also recently co-producer of the film, Down: Indie Rock in the PRC. Field holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Columbia University.
Graham Earnshaw is a publisher and writer with several decades of experience in the China world. He is publisher of Earnshaw Books and China Economic Review, and CEO of SinoMedia Ltd. He has written a number of books himself, including On Your Own in China (1984), Tales of Old Shanghai (2008) and an account of his continuing walk across China, The Great Walk of China (2010), and translated the Jin Yong Kung-Fu novel The Book and the Sword (2008). He has lived in the China world almost continuously since the mid-1970s and is a regular speaker at universities, schools, and businesses. He speaks Mandarin and Cantonese fluently, and his English is said to be acceptable.
About Hopkins China Forum: Hopkins China Forum events are organized under the auspices of The Johns Hopkins University and its affiliated alumni associations worldwide. For more information on Hopkins events in Shanghai, please contact Frank Tsai at the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association – Shanghai at editor@shanghai-review.org.
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